


#000000 & #FFFFFF

by nevergreen



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Canon Trans Character, Dark Army Elliot, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25673983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevergreen/pseuds/nevergreen
Summary: He was patient enough, and his patience was rewarded tenfold, when he saw the project he was given. He still has no idea what it is, and the instructions change and multiply every week, he barely keeps track of them. He coded for nights, and nights became weeks, and by the time he had done roughly the third of it, Elliot already knew there was only one more person on it.///Elliot is trying to disrupt Whiterose's plans by working on the Dark Army.
Relationships: Darlene Alderson/Cisco Shaw, Elliot Alderson/Whiterose | Minister Zhang
Kudos: 8





	#000000 & #FFFFFF

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lemon_demon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemon_demon/gifts).



///  
“Shit, kiddo,” he whistles. “How much did you spend on it? I thought you’d buy a popsie but this thing is good enough to make a good airhole between someone’s ears.”  
“A lot,” Elliot answers shortly, he’s not intended to discuss it. He weighs the gun in the hand, tries to hold it in both hands, and it still feels uncomfortable, though it slides into his palm perfectly. The thought of using it is sick enough alone. “Are you sure you really need it?” Mr. Robot says, glancing at him. “You don’t look like you like this part of a plan.”  
“I have you to use it if I have to.”  
“What if I won’t?”  
“Then you’d be dead too. If the situation forces you to, it’s either you do or you have my brains splattered on the floor.”

He sighs loudly, visibly annoyed. “I still don’t get why you need to create the plan that’s based on one single detail.”  
Elliot is silent for a while, considering, then says quietly:  
“I don’t expect you to understand. Just protect me, that’s what you here for.”

“I’d say you have a much better chance at killing yourself with it than taking Whiterose down,” Mr. Robot takes the cigarette from his pack. “I’m here to protect you, kiddo, and it involves protecting you from yourself.”  
“If you don’t want to help me, say so.”  
They look at each other for a while, then Mr. Robot turns away first. “You know I’ll be there for you.” He leaves his unlit cigarette on the table, and Elliot takes it.

He knew he was doing something important the second he was given the task. The code can be different, but it’s a set of rules, mostly, and sometimes the same rules can be applied in different circumstances. You never know for sure what you are doing – there are a lot of totally different systems that use the same protocols. The Dark Army is just a bunch of ghost hackers who do templates, the outlining, then the projects are taken from them and finished by others, who are higher on the food chain. Elliot has done countless of them, enough to figure out the big fish in an instant. 

He was patient enough, and his patience was rewarded tenfold when he saw the project he was given. He still has no idea what it is, and the instructions change and multiply every week, he barely keeps track of them. He coded for nights, and nights became weeks, and by the time he had done roughly the third of it, Elliot already knew there was only one more person on it. The code is returned to Elliot every time, to work on it further, and there were slight but unmistakable changes. Improvements, mostly – done by an experienced and firm hand, someone who knew what this project, whatever it is, was for. By the end of the month, the suspicion has grown into certainty. All this time Elliot has been working on someone’s pet project, and that someone was the one fixing it. 

Whoever they are, their work is brilliant. They make things easier and more logical, they fix stuff Elliot left hanging just to check how it will be fixed, in the most efficient way possible. Elliot picks on their ways quickly, and their combined work feels like a connection, a way to know each other, like shaking hands, playing a game, talking, making out are the ways of regular people. 

Mr. Robot is actually the one who says it out loud first. He sits on their kitchen, legs on the table, swinging back and forth, then stops and asks Elliot, loudly:  
“Do you think it could be Whiterose?”, and even before he finishes, everything in Elliot’s mind is illuminated. Suddenly there are no other options. It must be them, they are here, in the numbered lines of the code, Elliot knows it in this very second. Here they are, he found them, _I found them_ , and Mr. Robot laughs bitterly. “It’s they who found you, kiddo; what’s all the excitement about? They know who you are, and you still don’t know shit.” 

Elliot is silent. Anticipation and fear take turns in kissing his neck cold and hugging him tightly. “That’s just stupid,” Mr. Robot goes on, he’s getting more and more agitated with every word. “What are we going to do next? I won’t let you make yourself a target. You think they what, just come and invite you for dinner?”

Elliot looks at the scattered code, he’s been taking it apart for the whole evening, only to find nothing and put it together again. “They’ll do exactly that,” he whispers. “They need me to finish it.”  
“They don’t need you. After your work is done, it’s over. You’re a dead man walking.” Mr. Robot rubs his temples and sighs, deeply, letting all his irritation out. “Give it up, kiddo. We still can run away.”

They can’t, and he knows that. Mr. Robot has got one thing right, though: Elliot needs to make Whiterose acknowledge him. He needs to make sure his existence is known and taken into consideration. And he needs to know what project is that, and ruin it once and for all, because this is what he’s there for: to sow chaos and reap redemption, to fuck up the only force mighty enough to stop their plans.  
The person behind the carefully crafted code is playing with him, and their moves are unseen and potentially deadly. At this point, Elliot doesn’t care as long as he has the chance to end it.  
And if he couldn’t, he would end _them_.

He closes everything and shuts his computer down. When he drops on the bed, still fully dressed, he hears faint breathing down his ear.  
“I won’t let you kill yourself on this.”  
Elliot ignores him. As if it was ever enough to make him stop talking.

“You’re acting like you mean something in this. Whiterose, whoever they are, will eat you up. Your petty interest, your curiosity, it’s not going to take you far.”  
“Shut up.”  
“Just ask himself, Elliot – if you will be given a choice, either to know what’s this project about, who Whiterose is or to make your revenge, what will it be?”

Elliot turns over. Mr. Robot’s cap is lying between their faces. “Isn’t that obvious?” he asks, then takes out his phone and tap-tap-taps, sending his contact a message. When it’s marked read and destroys itself, Elliot puts the phone back and takes the cap away. They look at each other, and Mr. Robot is truly, deeply concerned, Elliot hasn’t seen him like this for a long time; he moves closer to him, then hugs tightly and whispers:  
“I’ll choose both.”  
They lie down together for a while. Falling down, struggling to open his eyes, Elliot feels Mr. Robot rocking him to sleep.  
When he wakes up, his arms are numb and he has one new message.

///  
“Who are they?”

There’s a pizza box full of crusts and cigarette ash between them, and they both are high enough to not brush this question off immediately. Cisco scratches his stubbly cheek and looks above, at his apartment’s shabby ceiling. Half an hour ago they both laughed their asses off when a piece of dry paint dropped right into Darlene’s cup of whiskey cola. She called them assholes, took an unfinished bottle of orange cola and Elliot’s pack of cigarettes, and got away through the window. Elliot can see her silhouette through the blinds, painted sharp black in an orange lamplight; she’s sitting on the balcony ladder, swinging her legs, smoking one after another. He turns away as soon as he notices another figure beside her, tall and hunched over.

“A tough fucking question, dude,” says Cisco finally, after a long silence. “I know just as much as you. If anything, it’s you who tries to find this out. You should be telling me stuff.”  
Elliot’s mouth breaks into a faint smile. His whole face feels like it doesn’t belong to him anymore, and oh god, does he love to dissociate, to fall apart. Cisco takes another draw and exhales in a thick, long puff of smoke. The whole apartment is hazy and everything reveals itself like he’s never seen any of it before. Mr. Robot peeks through the blinds. He’s holding his cap and a lit cigarette. “She seems distressed, kiddo. Might wanna talk to her.”

Elliot ignores him, he always does when he’s not alone. They got better at trusting each other, they willingly pass the control, at least; but the asshole still tries to mess with him, sometimes. When Elliot opens his mouth, he says instead:  
“Whiterose. Do you think it’s just one person?”  
He knows the answer for this one, by now – there’s no way a bunch of people could be that cooperative to imitate the work of a single person, but he still needs a reality check. 

“Probably? She can be anyone. I mean I’ve got some friends who believe Whiterose is a hot girl.” They share understanding silence after this. Then Elliot stands up, his legs are wobbly. “Gotta talk to her,” he announces, stepping on the pizza box, then clumsily forces himself out of the window. 

“Are you going to pull that big brother shit on her? Come on, we both know it’s her who acts like a big sis.” Cisco yells at his back, then says something else, his words are barely there, but Elliot is outside on a balcony already. He’s pretty sure he wouldn’t want to hear it anyway.  
Darlene’s back is long and narrow, and her hair is a tangled mess. Elliot drops himself down next to her, heavily, with the metallic thump. She doesn’t look at him. The pack of cigarettes is half-empty already. Elliot takes one, and she passes him a lighter. When they both finish their cigarettes, he finally opens his mouth. 

“Darlene.”  
“Don’t,” she cuts him off, and that’s exactly the thing he expects from her. “I had enough of your _let’s keep the poor girl away_ shit. I’m my own person, Elliot, and you’re going to take that into your fucking consideration.”  
He’s silent for a while, then asks, picking the words as carefully as he can:  
“What are you talking about?”

Her eyebrows jump and the corners of her mouth are twitching in a crooked smile. “Don’t play dumb, Elliot. You think I’m stupid or what? It’s hella obvious when you hiding shit.”  
It’s not the first time she tries to convince him to let her join, and definitely not the last. She knows it’s the only thing Cisco will never do for her. Elliot doesn’t want to do it either. She knows nothing about the work Elliot’s been given, no one does; but Cisco suspects something and everything that Cisco knows, Darlene knows as well. Elliot just hopes she won’t say any of her suspicions out loud.

“They will come after you. I don’t want that.” It’s the best Elliot can force himself to say. It’s not a lie. They’ve been tracking him since the project he’s in, although Elliot doubts he gave them much stuff to discuss. He tried to bore them out as much as he could. If he keeps saying neutral, borderline true things, Elliot tells himself, he could keep her off that track. 

“Of course, being involved with two Dark Army hackers at once protects me too fucking well,” she snaps. “If you fuck up, they will come after me too, and you know it.” She gulps down the remnants of orange cola and grimaces. “Shit, that’s warm.” She throws the empty bottle at the open window and it lands somewhere on the floor with a loud rattle. “I know there’s something else you’re not telling me.”  
Obviously, everything Elliot plans to say crumbles apart under the weight of a simple _I don’t believe you_. Darlene knows that between denying and being silent he would choose the latter, and Elliot’s silence is almost an admittance. She stares at him, her gaze is long and hard, and then – here it is, Elliot doesn’t even need to look at her to see her bright-lit face getting distorted by understanding – as distinct and ugly as if she’s disgusted. She gasps and moves further from him.

“Shit, Elliot!” She drops the cigarette and jumps on her feet. “It’s personal, isn’t it? That’s why you’ve been keeping everyone away!”  
Mr. Robot laughs behind their backs. Darlene laughs, too, her voice is broken and bitter. Elliot takes a step to her and she immediately darts back.  
He tries again. “I care about you too. You’re my sister.” It’s not even half a lie if both parts are somewhat true. She looks him in the eyes, and he knows she’s looking for Mr. Robot. It’s me, Elliot wants to say, and stops, not being sure it won’t make anything worse. All the words he had for her are completely gone. 

“Why are you acting like such a dickhead again?” she whispers, still looking at him, searching something in his face. Even if Elliot knew what she wanted to see, he wouldn’t be able to paint it on his face. “It’s not that you’re worried about me. It’s that you don’t want me to stand in your way.” And the truth is, Elliot didn’t have any arguments from the start. He had put them together from all the elusive lines and sheds of feelings he had and acted like they meant something. And Darlene, as pissed as she is, still knows better than accusing him straight. She’s protecting him, even now.

So she just throws his pack of cigarettes in him and yells, loud enough to make windows shaking:  
“Alright! Fine! Can you kindly fuck off then?!” Her face streaked across with resentment and hurt, wet eyes glimmer in the bright lamplight. She turns her back to him and squeezes herself through the open window; Elliot hears her kicking chairs and screaming at Cisco, then the door gets slammed against the wall and shut down with a deafening bang. Only then he goes back to the room.

Cisco stands in the middle of it, the kicked down chair is at his feet. “What’s with Darlene? She’s so pissed. What did you tell her?”  
“She wants to help me.” Elliot takes a quick glance at the window. Cisco looks confused. “Help, as in _help_ help, work together and stuff? She hasn’t told me anything.”  
Elliot forces himself to keep looking at him. He won’t be able to play words again, not now, and just waits, letting Cisco through the catalog of his own suspicions and picking the worst ones. When Cisco speaks again, his voice is quiet.

“You won’t let her.” It’s not a question, but Elliot waits for him to continue, and feels almost relieved when it doesn’t happen. He can understand it, the language of hidden threats, better than actual conversations, better than anything else. It doesn’t matter if he can’t speak it himself.  
“I won’t involve any of you.” If anything, Cisco is equally responsible for keeping Darlene away, so no more third party help, no more suspicion material even. “There’s nothing I can’t do by myself.”

Cisco weighs all of Elliot’s arguments. After a couple of seconds, he says carefully, reluctantly almost:  
“Why do you need it?”  
He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, Elliot reminds himself; still, it sends shivers down his spine. It’s borderline suicidal, to discuss anything like this. Still, Elliot considers his question for a while. Then he just whispers:  
“Whiterose.”  
Their name is sweet on the tip of his tongue.

///  
He meets with his contact the next day, at the abandoned factory building somewhere in rundowns, he is brought there by car with his eyes closed, and Elliot almost suppresses the urge of shaking off the hands holding him firmly as they walk him to the third floor. It was never like that before. Mr. Robot chuckles behind him, and Elliot knows he’s worried too. That’s probably the first time he truly realizes how far he has come. No backing off. 

The guy in front of him is wearing a white hazmat suit, the respirator is dangling off his neck. He’s sprawled over a dusty couch with springs peeking out here and there, biting into his big BBQ and Mr. Robot asks, eyeing him curiously:  
“Have you ever dripped a bit on that cool suit of yours? Or do they buy you the new one every time? Asking for a friend.”

He isn’t supposed to answer, he never did before, but differences are multiplying every second because he looks at Elliot as if there's a second head growing out of his shoulders, then shrugs and says:  
“I have never.” It seems like with this he exceeds the daily limit of words spoken for today, as he stands and silently indicates Elliot to follow, biting off a big chunk from his burger, and the crunching sounds make Elliot’s stomach twist and curl. 

Two men in masks are following them, and Elliot absently thinks how the Dark Army masks are just slightly uglier than fsociety’s. The sense of detachment is engulfing his slowly, getting more and more prominent every second and it’s comforting, even – but only for the first ten seconds. “Don’t,” he mouths at the side, where Mr. Robot is walking. “No one’s hurting me yet. But they will if you won’t let me do the talking.” 

Corridors are multiplying, Elliot and his convoy are turning both left and right unless he loses count. They walk for a good five minutes before ending up in the narrow dusty passage, with the door built-in and blending with the wall.

Inside the tiny, ill-lit room is a small square table, with a pair of steel chairs screwed down to the floor. The tiles on the floor are old and cracked, and Elliot is pretty sure he sees the rusty flakes between them. There’s a weathered, stained hatch at the corner of the room and Elliot can’t force away from the thought of bleak, blood-tinted waters flowing down the bars. 

There’s most certainly a reason why he was brought there when all of their previous meetings were in relatively public places – libraries, parks, fast food restaurants, once at the funfair even. Whatever they try to tell him, Elliot’s not buying it. At least that’s what he tells to himself.  
One of the men pokes his back with the gun and nudges him to step forward. Elliot hunches on one of the chairs. Mr. Robot stands by the window, and they wait.  
It’s a minute, then five, then half an hour, and the door is still closed and guarded from both sides. 

There’s nothing new in waiting for Elliot, so he submerges into himself and closes his eyes. Mr. Robot, on the other hand, is anxious, he walks the floor and mutters something under his breath. Elliot barely picks out almost indistinct _a fucking cheap tactic_ and if they were alone, he would ask why is it working on him then. He can’t, anyway, and anxiety is the most contagious thing in the world, so when the door finally opens, he’s holding his cold, sweated hands in the hoodie pocket.

The man that enters is tightly packed in an expensive suit, too clean for the room they’re in, and it seems like he’s on the same page with Elliot about this, because he meticulously studies the free chair, then touches it with the long slender finger. Seemingly content then, he sits down, and whoever he is, Elliot’s guts are telling him he’s being tricked again.  
So he tries to reconfirm carefully:

“I asked for the meeting with Whiterose and-”  
“I’m authorized to speak for her,” the man cuts him off. “You contacted us saying you have something important to say to her, so cut the crap.” His way of speaking is a mix of officialese and deep, almost personal offense, as if Elliot had taken him off something very important for him and him alone. Before the meeting, Elliot was deep down his head strategizing, but this man is impatient enough, having just said to lay it off, explicitly, so Elliot decides not to push any further and plays his trump card.

“It’s regarding her project.”  
He watches thoroughly shaped eyebrows raising slowly. If Elliot is right and Whiterose does have a project, he will force them to listen. If he’s mistaken, if it’s not hers, his blood will be rinsed from the tiled floor quicker than he stands up.  
What if she has a project but decides Elliot is too dangerous of an ally to have around? This thought makes him sick in an instant and he blurts out:

“It can’t be finished remotely. I need to discuss it with her.”  
The man is silent for a couple of seconds, and Elliot just now notices a tiny wire behind his ear. His face changes, slightly, as he’s listening to the invisible source, then asks Elliot, and his tone is impeccably flat:  
“How do you prove it?”

Elliot is ready for this one, in fact, it was the question he was hoping to get. He quickly takes his laptop out and loads it. When he opens the console, the man gestures to one of the guards, and he grabs the laptop from Elliot’s hands. The hinges squeak dolefully, and the laptop is put before the face of a man opposite. Mr. Robot is nowhere to be seen, Elliot notices, and if anything, it means that he’s more content about Elliot now. That’s a good sign.

“Look at the code. I’m pretty sure you can understand what’s what. You most surely need to make a pentest for a couple of things there, otherwise it would be pretty easy to disrupt from the outside. Given the importance of it, you would not want to have just a slightest possibility. It’s not a pentest if done remotely, also it’s not a pentest if it’s done with the help of the company’s tools. You need someone from the side but competent enough, and I’m the only person you can rely on.”

He finishes and inhales deeply. Mr. Robot reappears again and pats Elliot on the shoulder, chuckling. “Do you see Nice Eyebrows’ face? I swear, he looks like he saw a dead frog get smeared on his suit. Look at him, he’s been scolded like a fifth-grader. Good job, kiddo.”  
The man's face does change, slightly but noticeably. He scrolls through lines of the code, then slams down Elliot’s laptop and one of the guards takes it from his hands. Then he stands up, not looking at Elliot, and throws out the hand in his direction, his face is already turned to the door:  
“Escort him out.”

“Wait!” Elliot jumps from the chair, but the cold hard metal prickles his naked neck, convincing enough so Elliot doesn’t make any more advances. He yells at the man’s back, though. “If you won’t do this, the whole project would be disrupted! I know how to do it!”  
He's hold until their steps disappear down the corridor, then he's released. "Go,” the voice under the mask sounds hollow, artificial even. The gun is pressed into his skin. Elliot complies and slowly walks to the door. When they are outside the room, there’s no sign that anyone was there. 

Elliot is escorted to the front door and pushed out offhandedly. It’s cold outside, and clouds are forming giant, swollen shapes. Mr. Robot is beside him, looking at the sky too. “At least they didn’t make you bleed away there. I’d say you got lucky. They have everything they need right now.” He hesitates, looking at Elliot’s backpack, empty now. “We need to make them lose your trace, kiddo, before they come to their senses.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Elliot breathes out. “I need to recreate the project. Without it, I have nothing to press them on.”  
“That’s impossible. You can’t remember all of it, there were ten thousand lines at least and you don’t have any hard copies.” he stops and frowns. “Wait, kiddo. What did you have on that laptop of yours?”  
They are silent for a while. Giant water drops are staining the dry asphalt around them with circular dark spots, faster and faster, until the entire ground is wet. Finally, Elliot speaks.  
“Something that will take them to me.”  
Then he draws on his hoodie and walks straight into the brewing storm. 

They ride an underground train way longer than usual, mixing tracks, changing lines, then get off three stations from home and take a taxi. Elliot is soaked wet and quivering, but his eyes are deep and stubborn, and Mr. Robot is silent all the way home. They run up the stairs at the entrance, and it takes a good three minutes for Elliot to open the door, because his fingers are cold, wet and unresponsive. 

When he steps inside his apartment, closes the door and takes off the hood, Leon stands up from his sofa.  
He’s tall, terrifying, gorgeous, a looming shadow, a bad omen. There’s no one in the world Elliot wants to see more. He drops his backpack, and it slumps on the floor with a wet sound.  
“You got me quite worried with all that waiting, cuz,” Leon looks at Elliot, his stare is dark and sharp. He’s one of the few people that look at Elliot this way: knowingly, approvingly, like he’s confirming Elliot’s existence and value on the spot. “Ready to go?”  
Elliot can barely move his lips when he answers:  
“Always have been.”

He manages to grab the gun he bought and put it in the inner pocket of his hoodie the very second Leon turns back to open the door. It feels like it weighs a whole ton, the coldness of metal is burning his skin. Then he follows Leon; they go down the stairs, back under the cold rain; Leon opens the door before Elliot and gestures inside, his voice is deep and mellow. “Why don’t you sit at the front, cuz? I get we have plenty to talk about.”  
The car smells like leather and weed, and Elliot clumsily goes inside, moving like both of his feet are left. His hoodie and jeans stick to the skin, cold and damp, like a floorcloth.  
They drive in silence and it’s so unlike Leon Elliot knows, he just can’t stop studying him. Didn’t he say they need to talk? When their eyes cross, Leon slightly nods at him. The radio is on and mumbling, barely covering the knocking of raindrops surrounding them. The world outside is made of water and greyness.

“You said we need to talk,” Elliot finally looks directly at him. Leon hums. “Nah, cuz, I said we have plenty to talk about. Long time no see, aight?” He turns on the heating and offers Elliot a cigarette. He takes it gratefully, and after three attempts of light it up Leon does it for him. Leaning back, Elliot shivers again. “How long do we have to drive?”

“Somewhat about ten hours. You hungry?”

Elliot touches the hair. It starts to dry off. He’s still cold, but the warmth from the heating system starts to seep through his bones, and being warm and wet is insanely better than being cold and wet. “I’m starting to be.”

///  
Leon wakes him up in the morning. It’s still cloudy, but the rain is no more, and they’re in the middle of nowhere, thick tall trees are hugging the road from both sides tightly. Leon tosses the white plastic bag at Elliot; there’s a bunch of dry clothes inside. Elliot changes on the back seat. The T-shirt is a bit smaller than his size, but everything else fits just right, Leon even brought him another black hoodie instead, and Elliot thanks him. His own clothes are packed in the bag and get tossed in the trunk.

He munches on the granola bar while Leon smokes a joint, sitting on the hood. The air smells like wet turf and pine needles. When Elliot finishes eating, Leon throws him a half empty bottle of lemony water. It’s a bit warm from being at Leon’s pocket for a long time, but Elliot doesn’t mind. After he drinks it all, they’re back in the car, and Elliot is suddenly aware that Mr. Robot is nowhere to be seen since yesterday evening. Leon reads him turning his head around in his own way and assures him:

“Ain’t no soul around, cuz. We’re at the bottom of Tar Heel.” Motor growls softly, and Leon eases up on the gas pedal. “Gotta be there soon.”  
Ten minutes later, they meet the first car in an eight hours or so. It’s a shabby white pickup truck, thoroughly washed by the rain; his cargo area is filled with taped shut black body bags. The driver in a black cap and Leon exchange quick beeps, then the pickup gets up speed and disappears behind the curve in the road. Elliot quickly turns back to the window, feeling Leon’s eyes on him; to discharge the sharp buzzy feeling between his ribs – he’s not sure if he’s imagining it – he asks:  
“Who is she?”  
Leon picks on his question in a second, but takes some time to think nevertheless. Finally, he answers. “Not who you imagine her to be.”

 _What the hell does it mean_ , Elliot wants to ask, but is taken aback by the realization he can’t put together a clear image. Even in his eagerness to know her, to find out who she is, he forgot the one important thing. No matter what he tries to remember about Whiterose, Elliot is drawn to the idea of her, not considering her to be an actual person, despite knowing she is. She’s a human being. Suddenly the idea of meeting her puts a sick twisted feeling in his gut.

Leon looks at him and chuckles softly, as if knowing what Elliot thinks about. He doesn’t comment on it, though, just puts on the radio and says:  
“Don’t worry, Elli. You got yourself friends there.”

The road gets wider and wider with every kilometre they pass; the pine forest thins and disperse into the milky nothingness of a morning. The air smells thick and musky now, like a fog in a city. The road signs are bigger and newer here, and Elliot spots signs of life here and there, some farms with the roofs bright red, a small local oil derrick, even. Cars are way more frequent now, but Leon doesn’t signal to anyone else. When they enter the suburban area, there’s no one outside, only quiet white houses filling the clean narrow streets, a copypasted reality realm at its finest, and suddenly all Elliot wants is to find the right one by entering them one by one. Leon slows down, the only sound now is the quiet murmur of tires on the asphalt. The right one is somewhere close to the end of the middle road, looks just like all the others. 

"It’s all hers?” Elliot asks with a strained voice. Leon shakes his head. “A new establishment, cuz. No one’s living here.”

They get out, and Elliot shivers – it’s still cold outside. Leon’s head is on his arms, folded on the car roof, and he watches Elliot with a mix of entification and softness. Then he walks to Elliot and hugs him, tightly. He smells warm, and Elliot is stiff in his arms for a second, then relieved and exhales slowly. Leon pats his back, lets him go and gestures to the plain white door. Elliot makes a couple of steps towards it and looks back to Leon. He’s hanging out from his car’s window already.  
“Good luck, cuz,” he says. “Till we meet again.” 

Only when his car disappears behind copypasted houses, Elliot realizes Leon has never said goodbye like this before. If he gets more time to think about this, if he survives whatever comes after the door, then, maybe, he really will have a chance to see him again. To ask him, why.  
He turns his back to the street, waiting for something every second – shots, screams, a whistle of a knife thrown. Instead all of it Elliot gets a quiet squeak of the door opening. 

There’s a middle-aged woman on the doorstep, with the face thin and serious, he nods for him to come inside and steps away. He doesn’t feel his legs when he steps over. The door is closed behind him, and Mr. Robot says quietly, right to his ear:  
“Well, you did get your invitation for dinner.” When Elliot answers nothing, Mr. Robot chuckles. “But you know what? I’m getting more of a date vibe, frankly.”

The woman turns away from him and goes down the corridor. Elliot takes it as an invitation to go along and steps forward – one, two.  
The floor of Whiterose’s house feels warm under his feet.

///  
He hacked enough people to come to a conclusion that face defines nothing. Maybe, that’s why he can’t imagine her. He never could, after all. The hall is full of portraits, they’re on both walls, big and small, but all the faces covered in sticky tape, and Elliot quickly realizes they’re all the same without faces, just figures and shapes. Is this how Whiterose sees people around her, just bodies? Disposables? But she saw him, out of all people. He’s allowed here.

His body, though, continues to trigger all the alarms possible. His heartbeat is frantic and uneven, his palms are sweaty and cold, the area beneath his ribs is a roaring black hole – throw something inside, one more thing, and it’ll eat him up. They walk for so long, Elliot stops feeling his legs as his own, he’s now just a body flowing through the air. He barely sees what’s around – everything is blinding white, like the whole house is sunlit, though, he knows, there’s no sun outside. At this point, he feels as if there is nothing else outside as well – just him, the house, and a mind, an entity, a crystallized feeling calling themselves Whiterose. 

It’s not that Elliot can’t imagine her. It’s that there’s nothing to describe her with. When they stop before the door, Elliot closes his eyes, squeezes the lids tightly till he sees colourful circles and dots, and steps forward, when he’s told to.

Mr. Robot inhales sharply, the door closes behind them and Elliot is oh so relieved when he opens the eyes and the room is empty. It seems much more alive than the rest of the house, though – there’s a sofa on which someone clearly has sat before, a coffee table, a glass with remnants of ice on the bottom, a knife on the table – slim, thin and silvery. Elliot looks at it, frozen in place, then slowly picks it up. It weighs almost nothing, long and sharp, and there’s no blood on it, but when did it prove anything?  
When he feels his body being too light again, it’s a familiar feeling. Elliot mouths, speaking with no one: “Back off, I’m still okay.”

Only when no one answers, Elliot finally connects the feeling with the actual reason and nearly stops breathing.  
His gun is inside his wet hoodie, packed in a plastic back, getting tossed with a bunch of other clothes in Leon’s trunk, and perhaps he forgot because he hated the thought of it? Perhaps, he just missed some time when he was changing clothes?  
No. It’s not that Elliot forgot. _He_ didn’t let him. 

“It’s for the letters,” says the voice, and this is the last thing that makes the black hole inside Elliot devour him, enter his ribcage, cling to his heart. Elliot drops the knife and it falls on the table with a crystal clinking sound. Before his heart stops, the only thing Elliot manages to say is.  
“Hi.”  
He doesn’t even turn to the voice, he can’t do anything, his heart skips a beat, then two. “Please, sit down,” the voice continues. The beep of a stopwatch shakes Elliot like a defibrillator, and he turns to the voice, slowly.  
The first thing he thinks: _there’s nowhere to sit but right beside her_. The sofa is the right size for two, and there’s nothing more. Even the bar counter doesn’t have any stools behind it. 

Whiterose is all lines, swift and smooth. She doesn’t look at him – her eyes are on the door, half-opened. She gestures with her hand, slightly, barely moving it, and an Asian girl, short, with ash-coloured hair, goes inside. She’s fast like a quicksilver drop, slides behind the bar and clinks with the glass. Whiterose looks back at Elliot. She’s no regal, but her face is. Eyes, outlined black, are sharp and narrow, the eyes of a highblood. Her carefully painted in matte red lips open slightly when she says, every word crafted carefully: 

“We don’t have much time, Mr. Alderson.” Her arms are on her knees, folded, and a slit of her silk, creamy white dress reveals her legs. She’s strong, quick, like a snake, and perhaps just as poisonous – at least, her voice is, because Elliot is dizzy and no longer himself. He steps closer. “Start talking,” she says again, and her voice is quicker this time, and less soft. He needs to say something, but everything that is on his mind is Leon, finding the gun, bringing it back here, and her, putting him on the knees, drawing his own Glock at his face.

“Your project,” Elliot croaks, looking at her sharp black nails. They look like they can cut his skin open. “You need me to finish it.”  
“How bold,” she almost purrs with this voice of hers, and takes the glass from the hands of the girl quietly approached from the side. The girl hesitates visibly, looking at Elliot through the veil of her ashen hair and back at Whiterose, holding the second glass, which is obviously for him. Whiterose nods ever so slightly, and the girl puts it on the coffee table and disappears just as fast as she came. 

“We need to discuss how to make it work without troubles, because from what I’ve learned, this thing is designed to be used once, and there can’t be anything disrupting its work.”  
“What makes you think we can’t do that without you?” She takes a sip of her drink, puts it back right next to Elliot's glass and crosses her legs. The dress hugs her thighs tightly, and Elliot sees it: a shape of a gun, covered in silk. She traces the direction of his gaze and smiles, the smile is small and confident. “What makes you think I can’t just take the gun out and kill you?”  
“You don’t kill,” Elliot breathes out. “You have others for that.”

Whiterose laughs, and it’s not an artificial one: she throws her head back slightly and her short breathy laugh echoes in the white room. Elliot can’t take his eyes off her gun and the shape of her leg under the silk. When she stops laughing, she says softly, almost endearingly:  
“You’re here to learn what the project does, right? You want to know what you’ve been working on, and ruin it, because you think it’s important for me.”

He dives deeper in his head to find the answer: is he surprised that she knows? He isn’t. At some point she would. That’s why he had a gun. Not anymore.  
“You tried to create a backdoor using your laptop. I found out the second it was brought here.” Her voice is the same, it’s still the voice she could use dining with the movers and shakers at the ridiculously overpriced restaurant and discussing changing tides. “Now I suggest you start talking about your real motives. You see, I do kill. But only when I’m in the mood, _Elliot_.” His name is sweet when Whiterose says it. 

If he survives, he can ask Mr. Robot why the hell he disarmed him. And if he won’t, he can at least ask her the question he wanted to from the start.

“I want to stop you, because you are the one who profited the most from 5/9. You conducted it and manipulated everything and everyone into making it your way. And people are dying because of you.”  
“Do you know why I did it?” No denying, no confirmation, no admittance – just a simple continuation of the chosen line. Elliot exhales deeply. “Because you wanted to. Because of...” he stumbles and the realization hits him like a rising tide. “Because of... so this project could happen?..”  
Her smile is still there when she continues after him:  
“You still haven’t asked the thing you want. The time is not endless, and you do not have plenty.”

Her hair curves along her face in a black soft line. Elliot looks at her matte red lips when opens his own, asking barely audible:  
“Why me?”

And she smiles, and this smile is sharper than her letter’s knife. _Finally_ , this smile says. “You are not here because of the project, Elliot. You could try to disrupt it from far away. Frankly speaking, you’d have a better chance at doing so. But you want to be needed. To be appreciated, irreplaceable. You’ve done a remarkable job, and you wanted to be praised, boy. Because no one has ever praised you like you deserved to.”

Elliot tries to say something but his throat is dry and the air inside his lungs feels viscous, he can’t manage to push it forward. She looks at him with the unreadable expression in her eyes, and Elliot takes three wobbly steps forward, takes the glass from the table and empties it without feeling the taste, without even thinking there could be something in it. “People love me,” he says with a voice down, “they love me.” He wants to say who loves him, to prove her wrong. It’s Darlene, she loves him. He remembers her eyes filled with tears when they talked for the last time. He still hasn’t said sorry. He took it for granted she doesn’t expect him to.

It was Darlene and their father. It’s only Darlene now. It’s either the alcohol kicking in or the room spins round, Elliot shakes from a sudden cold.  
“She loves you. But she doesn’t know how to handle you.” Whiterose stands up and it’s the first time she’s that close. Her hand with sharp black nails lies on his shoulder and squeezes slightly. The nails didn’t cut his clothes and skin open, just press into the fabric. “Come. I’ll show you.”  
“What?” he manages to breathe out.  
“The thing you wanted to destroy so badly.”

///  
Cisco’s apartment is dimly lit with a TV working, Elliot sees it from the outside. He can’t even manage to knock on their secret password, the door opens with a slam-bang and Darlene jumps on him and hugs him tightly, she’s almost crying. “What the fuck, Elliot!” she screams while hugging him so tightly he can’t breathe. “We went crazy thinking where you could be!”

Cisco drags them both inside, scolding them for making too much noise; it looks like he is almost glad to see Elliot too – relieved, at least. “You’ve been missing for a whole fucking week! Where have you been? What happened?”  
“I had to lie low,” Elliot tries to pull away from the hug, he’s glad to see her, he’s even more glad she’s not mad at him, but the breathing is really a problem at this point, and she finally lets him go. “What happened?” she says again, her eyes are gleaming in a dim light. “I’ll fix you guys a coffee,” Cisco announces and goes over the counter. Darlene gives him a quick grateful look.

“They found me. I think they thought they didn't need me anymore. I was lying low outside the city.”  
Darlene eyes narrow. “Where? I didn’t know you had a place.”  
“I didn’t,” Elliot shrugs. “A friend of mine helped. He owed me one and now we’re fair and square.” She still eyes him suspiciously. Then she says suddenly:  
“It’s you, right? You shoved Elliot in your fucking mind pocket again?”

Elliot draws slightly away and takes her by the shoulders, as gentle as he could. It should set enough of a difference by itself, Mr. Robot is never gentle, he knows it well. “What’s the most disgusting thing in the world?”  
“Cookies with a mint gum.” She answers in an instant. “God, Elliot, it’s really you. But what the fuck you’re talking about? Who could lend you a whole place? What kinda friends do you have?”  
“Well, Cisco lets you to his place, right?”  
“That’s different,” she still lets him hold her and that alone says lengths about how startled she is. Elliot is almost sorry. “Is it Dark Army friend?”  
“Yes, I helped him once. Not a big deal, just covered his ass with some stuff. This time he covered mine.” 

“What’s next? You still need to hide somewhere, right?” Cisco finishes with the coffee, clinks the spoon loudly to let them know he finished and now just smokes in the open window; Darlene bites her lower lip and looks concerned. You don’t have to be concerned about me, not anymore, Elliot wants to say, but stops himself. It’s not the time yet. “Yeah, about that... I might need to disappear for awhile. They still want to find me and I don’t want to put you in danger. I’m here to warn you both.”

Darlene frowns and sighs. “Elliot, are you sure? You think you won’t get hurt hiding from them?”  
“I’m not,” and it’s the first lie for today. It feels burning, but that’s what she needs the most, so he’s willing to protect her this way. “But it’s better than waiting for them to finish me off.”

She hugs him again, she’s reluctant but softer this time. “You need to keep contacting me so I would know if anything is wrong. Shit, Elliot, you just came and now you're running away again.”  
“Of course I’ll contact you,” Elliot strokes her hair. She feels like home, his little sister he must protect. He will give her all that this world robbed her off. “Tell Cisco yourself. I don’t want him to ask me questions that could put him in trouble.”

When he leaves the house, the car is still waiting for him three blocks away. He crawls inside, and the firm, but caring hand closes the door behind him. It feels like a welcome hug, when the same hand lies to his neck, scratching down his skin, then shaved sides of his head with the sharp black nails. Elliot blinks and smiles to himself only. He wants to make it as long as he can.

“Come here,” the voice says, warm and deep, and he slides on the silk covered lap, guided by the hand he’s so familiar with. “You did a good thing, Elliot. You’re a good boy.” Whiterose is holding him tight, and when the car starts moving, her lips slide down his neck, leaving a faint red trace. “I’m proud.”

“You know why he took my gun away?” Elliot asks, his back is pressed into her chest, his arms are dangling freely. If she’s surprised, she hides it very well. “Why?”  
“Because he wanted to protect me. And he thought the best thing he can do is to make you my ally.”  
“He knows better,” Whiterose smiles into his neck, takes both of his arms and puts them to her waist. “Was he right about it?”

Elliot thinks on the question for a while, then turns to face her. “He’s mad that my father is going to replace him now. But he isn’t.”

The matte red lipstick tastes like ashes and flowers.


End file.
